2021 was better than 2020, which is not saying much. What else can we say?
1. Aaron, now 18, is a senior (see his senior portrait above) at Booker T Washington High School and is currently applying to a range of colleges. He often says he is interested in both mathematics and English. Not only does this sound to us like a smart way of declaring himself "undecided," it also hints at the world of interests that lies between those two: to date his main interests appear to remain good friends (often an extension of his school soccer team), science fiction books, fine food, and strategy games, plus occasionally physics and economics. Now the tallest in the family, Aaron is settling into his long-deserved adult status and autonomy. We are delighted to observe him preparing to make choices about his future. Recent books include Liu's The Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy (whose first book is the well-known Three-Body Problem).
2. Elliot, now 15, is a freshman in the upper school of Holland Hall. He has joined the Ultimate Frisbee team at his school and serves as a manager to their boy’s basketball team. He also enjoys coding, geometry, and especially his English teacher and is working to organize his efforts in managing a full slate of other school subjects. He may return to the trumpet in band next year. Meanwhile, Elliot, who attends early morning seminary and enjoys a growing friend circle at school and church, is a tall and delightfully bombastic young man who is growing into himself. Recent books include Herbert's Dune, Orlin’s Change is the Only Constant, and Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed.
3. Libbie, now 12, is rising through seventh grade at Holland Hall Middle School, where Kourtney teaches. Libbie has the best grades in the family and is navigating her clear loves of math, Spanish, English, violin, an impossible infatuation with our now two-plus-year-old "puppy" Wilson, and the usual middle school scramble of friends. Her school basketball team may or may not have won any games but it is generally acknowledged that anyone on Team Libbie is always already winning. Recent books include Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, Hale’s Goose Girl, and Dicken's A Christmas Carol.
4. Maya, now 9, is a maturing third-grader, a wise younger sister to all, and a continuous source of joy and empathy in our family. She plays regularly with new friends, like Zeynep and Cassidy, and old friends, especially Anna and Claire (who recently moved to Chicago); friendly to all, Maya is known in class and at home for being thorough and patient, and she is perfecting her efforts to ignore annoying boys. She is interested in taking up new music lessons. Recent books include the first four books in the Harry Potter series, Tolkien’s The Two Towers, and various Sequoia books at school.
5. Ben is completing his third year as chair with his superb media studies colleagues at his university, and continues to toil away on various book and research projects that delight him and select others. The coedited volume, Your Computer is on Fire, came out this year and has received accolades in academia and industry. He's also working away at, among others, a coauthored short book on Russian hackers as a media phenomenon (more here). Thanks to the pandemic, he has come to enjoy less traveling, recentering his attention at home and in classrooms (virtual, in-person, and Sunday School) where he finds more enduring contentment. Recent books include Graeber's The Dawn of Everything, the NRSV, and reading bits of Jane Austen to the kiddos at night.
6. Kourtney continues to anchor our corner of the world while also tackling a dynamic mathematics curriculum in the Holland Hall Middle School (this year, for example, she is teaching the sixth grade math for the first time) as well as running point on a department-wide teaching innovation initiative with Pam Harris. Known for making her brightest A+ students cry before October and then, by March, express enduring gratitude for years after, she also devours audio books, juggles one kid in each of the primary, middle, and upper school divisions at her workplace, exercises daily at paces that not even the puppy can match, teaches each of her kids in Primary for what will soon make a decade, and, by all accounts, leads the family in genuinely prospering. Recent books include Rothfuss’ Name of the Wind, Hitz’ Lost in Thought, and Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
7. Wilson, now over two, is our super well-behaved "puppy" who leavens our eccentric and surely smelly family with his unrequited love and affection. Wilson fills in all the nonverbal gaps in a home all too preoccupied with words.
Our family remains involved in the occasional service project on behalf of Afghan refugees moving to Tulsa.
Come visit us on Route 66: the BBQ and the Gathering Place are world-class!
